
Something's been spinning around in the back of my mind for the past few days and chipping away at my sanity:
This article from the Clipper, which details the horrible experience of one Mr. Seegmiller.
You see, Mr. S enjoys his Sundays. He likes to go to church and spend time with his family on Sundays, as do all good upstanding God-fearing folk. On this particular Sunday, however, the sanctity of the Sabbath was violated when Mr. S heard band music emanating from the Junior High School behind his Bountiful home. He went to investigate and was shocked, shocked to find band members practicing instruments in bikinis and speedos! Yes, here in our very own community of Zion.
The orgy of music and debauchery was brought into the midst of the Saints by the Blue Coats marching band, visiting from Canton, Ohio.
And that's basically it. There are two extremely disturbing things about this article, though. And one of them I just can't put my finger on.
First - The self-righteousness of Mr. S makes my eyeballs want to explode. "This is Sunday, and it’s a day for worship and meditation and spiritual things...I understand we want to open our doors to people, but if they are coming to our community, which is family-oriented and conservative, they should adhere to our standards,” he is quoted as saying.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with his attitude about the sanctity of the day [
he hypocritically posted to his blog on Sunday], but more importantly I agree with the 11th article of faith of the LDS Church: "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship [
or choose not to worship] how, where, or what they may." Yes, Mr. S, it is a special day, but by no means can we dictate to others that they "adhere to our standards." This holier-than-thou attitude is the main beef that Utahns who are of other faiths have with the members of the church, and they're right.
Get off your high horse, Mr. S. You could have done any number of things in this situation. You could have put in earplugs and read your scriptures, you could have put on some spiritual music of your own to drown out the "ruckus", or you could have simply and politely asked the band members to tone it down a bit. Which you may well have done, because what follows next is extremely vague as far as the article goes, and leads into my next point about what disturbs me about this story.
Second - I can't for the life of me figure out how this article made it into a newspaper, much less
the lead story on the front page of the paper! Is the editor a member of the church and wanted to show the rest of us the ungodly behavior of some
NON-Mormons? Is he anti-LDS and wanted to show an example of the self-righteous indignation some Mormons are prone to expressing? I don't believe either of these are the case, which makes this all the more perplexing to me.
Something else fishy is the amount of missing information, and the reliance of only Mr. S as a source for so much of it.
For example:
"According to Seegmiller, the young women in the band and drill team were wearing bikini tops and bottoms and halter tops, while some of the young men wore only Speedo swim suits."
Really? All the women were in bikinis and the guys were in speedos? "According to Mr. S", they were, so it's good enough to not verify for yourself, Mr. Writer?
"Even more, Seegmiller claims he was treated poorly by two men from Utah County who were working as advisers to the band.
'I was basically accosted by these men,' Seegmiller said. 'I was trying to find out what other neighbors thought, and the police came and these men just screamed at me, saying degrading things about the LDS Church.'"
What? What does "find out what other neighbors thought" mean? Were there other people present that he happened to be asking, or was he going door-to-door or calling people like a good busybody should? It leaves that out for some reason. And "the police came" is sort of brushed off, as well. How did the police come to get involved?! Isn't that kind of important? Why is nobody else quoted in this article who was actually present?
Anyway, I know this is such a minor thing, but I can't let go of the reaction I had when I read this on the (again)
front page of a paper I work for, and therefore have a stake in its credibility. Are the questions I pose unreasonable? I don't think so.
Labels: journalism